Lava Mountain (West Side)

Exploring the West Side of Lave Mountain
Absaroka Range, Shoshone NF
January 20th, 2007

Making ready.

After triggering avalanches last weekend, we chose an objective we thought would be a little safer. Nothing had been sliding on west slopes (mostly because they're wind scoured). We needed to explore Lava Mountain anyway. It happened to have a west slope that I was curious about. So we loaded up and headed in for a tour of the area.

After about 4 or 5 miles in we parked the machines and started skinning. Just the skin in there was looking promising.

On a small hill on the way in Chuck and Karla practiced skiing on their snowboards.

After a mile or so of skiing we reached the open slopes. We started getting some nice views of the surrounding country.

Spectacular scenery, but wierd ski terrain. It was looking pretty scoured.

In case you're wondering what those mountain are.

Pick your line. Like I said, it was wierd terrain. Pockets of great powder, and then huge wind drifts and hard packed areas. The base was very firm and the angles were pretty low. Our concerns about avalanches up here were pretty minimal.

Chuck starts the last leg of the climb to the top.

Karla nearing the summit of Lava Mountain.

Looking north/ northeast across the top of Lava Mountain.

Time to ride!

I took my skis for this expedition. Figured we'd be skinning alot. They're better for longer tours.

Pretty nice!

Once on top, we decided to snoop around, so we actually dropped down the other side, and found some nice shots with good powder. The weather started going down on us though. We only got a run in before we decided to head back. We didn't want to drop the bigger stuff in white-out conditions, if we could help it.

Chuck cruises the west side, of Lava Mountain.

The light got pretty flat, that combined with blizzard like snow, made it difficult to snoop out a fun route down the west side. We ended up taking a pretty wind scoured and bumpy line. Oh well! It got us back.

Chuck prepares to launch.

Karla rides her way down the west side.

Finally, off the mountain, we begin the cruise back to the machines.

Looking back on Lava Mountain. You can barely see the flat-top ridgeline that we dropped from in the distance.

Not a stellar day for turns, but we learned a bit about the country and saw lots of it. Plus we didn't trigger any avalanches. Beats a day on the couch!

Here's a map that plots our approximate routes. You may have to click on it to read it. The red is the snow-machine route. The blue is our skin track. The black represents areas where we got some turns in.